Playing Art

Islamic Star Patterns? As the author explains: "Over a thousand years ago, artisans in the Islamic world began to develop a system for constructing intricate geometric art based on radially symmetric starlike figures."

What we have here is an opportunity to play with this art - in a way its originators had never conceived of. By launching a rather sober-looking Java applet, we can shrink and stretch and widen and combine or way to works of wonder - interlacing, intricate patterns of knots and not and what not. It's solid evidence of one of the computer's major contributions to the art of fun, bringing us new, and endlessly fascinating tools for playing art.